Our solar family

Our solar family consists of the sun, nine known planets and their satellites, asteroids, comets and meteors. The most important body in this great family is the sun. There are few kinds of energy on the earth that are not the gift of the sun.

The sun’s mass is 750 times that all of the planets put together. Like all the other bodies in the universe, it is composed of the same sort materials we find on the earth. Of all elements of building blocks of nature, which we have discovered, some 68 have been found on the sun, and none have been found in the sun, which are not now known on earth.

Our sun has a surface temperature of about 6,000^oC. A star as hot as the sun must radiate an enormous amount of heat. Every square meter of the sun’s surface radiates energy equal to 84,000-horse power. Yet, the total amount the earth receives is only a very small fraction of it. Here is a possible source of energy for the future. The age of the earth is about two billions of years. The sun must have been in existence long before the earth was formed. During all that time the sun has been radiating heat continuously, and still continues to do so. To produce this great amount of heat would require the hourly burning over its entire surface of a layer of high-grade anthracite coal sixteen feet thick. If burning coal produced the heat of the sun, it would require an inexhaustible supply to furnish such intense heat over this great period of time.

Planets, the most important bodies of the sun’s family, are of greatest interest to man, not simply because they are nearest to us, but because we live, work, and enjoy life on one of them. If somewhere life similar to our sexists, we must look for it on planets, not on stars, comets, of meteors.

The sun has a family of nine planets moving around it in orbits that are ellipses, and not circles. Their names in order from the sun are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Mercury is not only the nearest planet to the sun, but it is, with one possible exception, the smallest of the planets. It is the swiftest in its movement about the sun, and its year consists if eighty-eight days. Because of the difficulty of locating it in the bright twilight, it has been called the “elusive planet”. Venus is the brightest star in the sky, next to the sun and moon. When it appears as an evening or morning star, it shines very brightly.

Jupiter is the giant among the family of planets. It has a diameter 11 times that of the Earth. Not only is Jupiter the largest planet, but it is whirling rather quickly, completing a rotation every 9 hours and 58 minutes. In its movement around the sun, however, it is rather slow, requiring almost 12 years making a complete revolution.

Jupiter has a family of fourteen satellites, and some of them are larger then Mercury. Beyond Jupiter is Saturn, the second largest of the planets. It has a family of 15 satellites, one of which, Titan, is larger than our moon and is almost as big as Mercury.

From recent observations made by automatic cosmic apparatuses, which added three more new small satellites to the first twelve, it was established that these three new moons strikingly resemble our moon in appearance. The diameter of the fifteenth satellite, the nearest to the planet’s surface, is about 50 kilometers and its surface is likely to be very uneven.

The most impressive thing about Saturn is its ring system. The rings lie like thin sheets of silver around the planet’s equator. Three are six basic rings stretching for about 300 thousand kilometers from the planet. Observations show that they are not solid but consist of hundreds of independent “ringlets”. The automatic cosmic apparatuses also succeeded in measuring Saturn’s magnetic fields, which are thought to be highly important in the creation of both protoplanets and planets.

Little is known of the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto; they are so far away that the most powerful telescope cannot reveal anything but, small, illuminated bodies. Uranus and Neptune are small when contrasted with Earth. Uranus has satellites and Neptune one; Pluto may not have any. In 1977 5 rings round Uranus were found, and in 1978 3 more were discovered.

Because of the Earth’s rotation, we have day and night on the earth. Revolution is the earth’s yearly motion about the sun. The path that the earth pursues is called its orbit. Although it is really an ellipse, it is so nearly round as to appear a true circle.

Mars aroused more interest than any of others planets. When nearest the earth, as it was in September 1956, it is an object of great beauty.

There are many ways in which this planet is similar to the earth. It rotates on an axis in about the same time as does the earth. It has seasons similar to the season on the earth, except that they are nearly twice as long.

Small bodies located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is called asteroids.

Of these bodies, called “planetoids” or miniature planets, the largest is Ceres – 780 kilometers in diameter. Their origin is not fully known. It is thought that they represent small masses of matted that were not able to combine into larger ones during the genesis of the solar family.

COMMENTARY

the sun must have been in existence – сонце, повинне бути, існувало

are of greatest interest – становить найбільший інтерес

twice a long – у два рази довше